Bingo. I hear Billy Bush gets incensed too if you bring up his Bush family relations. Both Cooper and Bush probably believe that they are true “self-made men,” rather than (humbly) admit that they have benefit from the inherent privilege that comes from their family backgrounds.

History already has a guide for us with the Progressive Era. The reformist Left needs to organize, put up political pressure and get like-minded Democratic candidates nominated and elected; a century ago, they started at the local level on up, and I suspect that’s the way we’d have to do it again.

The thing is, though, one thing we can identify—with the GOP holding nearly 3/4 of governorships and always within a striking distance of a majority in Congress even when they’re a minority—is that the milquetoast Third Way politics that have defined the Democratic Party over the last two decades are not a strategy…

Well, as someone who grew up and was raised in the Rust Belt, I did just that—got two degrees and moved to Canada. Having a good paying job with benefits, national healthcare that doesn’t depend on my employment status and a stable political system does wonders for one’s anxiety issues.

Well, if you’re someone of means, eat locally-sourced foods, shop at small businesses instead of big box stores and bank at your local credit union. You’ll certainly never know if one of these people happened to vote for Trump or not, but small businesses have effectively little political power and wouldn’t be part…

TLDR; I’m not sure there is anything the Democrats can do, without sacrificing their ideals, to get Republican voters to jump ship at this point in time. We have to wait for the Trump administration to screw them over first.

Flattery is the key to a narcissist’s heart, so it’s going to be very easy for every world leader to get Trump to like them...at first. Narcissists are also highly unreliable and are prone to change their mind—and mood—very unpredictably, which is also why the media is finding it very hard to figure out what Trump…

I’m certainly sympathetic. My parents, while not hipster whatsoever, effectively gave me a name most common in a long extinct culture from Late Antiquity about 1500 or so years ago. It’s a real name, but I’ve never actually encountered another living person with it. I avoid it to the point that very few people…

Ehh...I can forgive Balthazar; at least it’s spelled correctly, and it’s a name that’s still actually used in modern times. Not everyone wants to name their children Dick or Jane or “McMaddysynn”—yes, I made that last one up. :P

Sorry for this rant, but my God, I am SO SICK of people treating the rust belt/Midwest like it’s THE BACKBONE OF AMERICA and more important than people in liberal and/or big cities. This is 2016, not 1950.

I find it less interesting, if only because, by the 6th century, the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire would have been firmly Christian—and thus prone to the same kind of “slut shaming libel” our culture still loves to engage in (the more things change...).

Distrust in democracy tends to coincide with a decrease in economic security. In the 1930s during the Great Depression, many Americans openly expressed support for fascism and communism—hell, there were even some prominent monarchists, considering the number of immigrants that came from countries with them. The…

Yup...as an American living in Toronto, it’s been odd watching Trump play “Rob Ford Part 2.” I believe a lesson to be learned in both circumstances is that leftists need to learn how to talk to the working class again—and I don’t mean that as a code word for “white,” as Rob Ford’s working class base was racially…

I don’t know why some Americans want to elide the real history of the national socialist movement and its current relevance.

In theory, you’d be right—in their worldview, the Pope is second from the top of the pyramid, with God at the top. In practice, the Pope has to worry about dissent not only within the church’s cardinals and bishops, but also from internal schism with the general public. It’s funny, if only because leftist dissent is…

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that he’s pro-choice. Francis tends to put a lot of emphasis on pastoral care and seems to err on the side of “forgiveness” over “punishment.” I think that’s what we’re seeing here—maintaining “the rules,” but not wielding them as a weapon the way his two predecessors were (in)famous…

Do they not realize that kids will end up in those sorts of predicaments as well?

I think when people discover that he’s a political fraud and not just a personal fraud, voters might finally start to pay attention. Either that, or his personal issues just become overwhelming.

And yet Bush won re-election handily in 2004 after his narrow win in 2000. In other words, as much as we treated Trump and the GOP as a joke this cycle, we have to take them seriously.

Laws that enact effective voter suppression are definitely a problem. At the bare minimum, I think we need a Voting Rights Act that applies to the entire nation, not just certain Southern states. The GOP’s “Southern Strategy” is effectively nationwide.